Central Wildcat

We have been treated to a variety of subjects while reading postings to this blog. I have enjoyed reading all of it. We have read about our various experiences during the Vietnam War, about our feelings when JFK was murdered, about what we remember of 1961, and lots of good poetry. But except for a few memories of what it was like to be a member of the football team, I don’t think anyone has written anything about their thoughts and feelings about being a student at Central High School in the late 1950s, which is the one thing all of us have in common. Like all periods in our lives, some of it was joyous but some of it was hard. Many people would love to relive their high school years but for others it was the worst time of their lives. Remarkably, now as the school year begins, it will have been 50 years since we walked up those granite steps as seniors. So this seems like an appropriate time for me, and hopefully you, to write remembrances of that time.

I have a brother more than seven years older than I. Central, class of ‘52. He is my only sibling and I looked up to him. He was popular in school, had a lot of girlfriends, and loved his years at Central, and I lived those years vicariously. I was the little brother that he and his friends pretty much ignored, but they were around the house a lot and I listened to their conversations and knew that they were all having a grand time. I would pore over Joe’s annuals when he wasn’t around, reading all the things written in them by his classmates. I can still remember the names of the athletes on the football team, Nathaniel Jones, John Rivas, Chuck DiPietro and Celestino Elizondo. What magical names. I remember being enthralled and intimidated by the majesty and massiveness of the building itself when we drove by, knowing that some day I would walk the same halls that football heroes and war heroes had walked before me. My family took a trip to the State Capitol in Denver when I was ten or so, but other than that, Central High School was the most beautiful building I had ever seen. Three years I would have there, I told myself, three wonderful years. I couldn’t wait.

First I had to endure Keating, looking at the big school across the street and seeing the guys in their letter jackets and cool cars and with their girlfriends sitting close, circling the building after classes. I expected more out of myself than I achieved at Keating, but what didn’t happen was my own fault because, as I learned, things don’t always come easy, as they had up to that point. You have to do homework to get good grades, something that had been unnecessary up to then. You have to participate in order to make new friendships. And being a decent athlete at little Carlile doesn’t mean squat when you get together with the guys who can really play the games. So even though I had some good times and made some friends, I was ready to leave Keating and enter the kingdom of Central, where anything was possible.

When I became a student at the University of Colorado in 1961, after having thought that would be impossible, even to the degree of not even dreaming about it, I was in awe, and I think that feeling never really went away for the two years I was in Boulder. Holy shit, CU! The Golden Buffaloes, beautiful girls, The Hill, Sink, Tulagi and Chautaqua Park which was two blocks from our apartment. Folsom Stadium, the Glenn Miller Ballroom, the red sandstone buildings and the Flatirons. Pearl Street before the mall. I had a little bit of the same feeling while at Central. This was the school I always knew I would attend and finally I was here, with the traditions of winning teams and smart kids and venerable teachers. When I was a senior I had a car and lunch period was just prior to Miss Leddy’s journalism class. Sometimes I left campus, and I can remember sitting in my car at the A & W on Prairie, eating a burger and fries, looking at Greenhorn Mountain that seemed to be only a couple of miles away, and thinking to myself, “I am a student at the best high school in the best city in the best state in the best country in the world.” Talk about elite! Really, I thought that. I walked into journalism late, and Miss Leddy said, “Jerry must have had lunch in that little place he likes in Beulah.”

Once, in a class Mr. Ivan was teaching, he was talking about school pride. Thinking about the run-down condition of the building, Vic Keen said, “I don’t think we have that much to be proud of here.” I was dumbfounded! Not proud of Central? I’m sure my mouth fell open. Mr. Ivan went on to say that a school is not just the physical plant, but history, tradition, spirit, and the students who came before. The building was old but never seemed to be in disrepair to me, and even if it was, it was Central Goddam High School!

When I was a sophomore the basketball team made it to the state tournament, like it always seemed to do. I didn’t go but listened to the games on the radio. The next year I went to the tournament with a friend, stayed at the downtown Colorado Hotel with what seemed like half the Central student body, and got drunk for the first time in my life on vodka that we somehow acquired. But that’s another story. Hopefully one of the other participants will write it. If no one does, I will. The manager of the hotel threw all of us out the next day. But back to March of 1957, I listened to what I think was the final game, and it was close all the way. One of the Central seniors made a mistake at the end that may have cost the team the state championship. I was heartbroken. On Monday I saw that player in the hall, and he was laughing. Laughing? I was grieving and he was laughing? Maybe I have always taken sports too seriously. I even used to like to look at the dog-eared stuffed wildcat in the trophy case.

I went out for football as a sophomore. I was maybe 5 foot 10 and weighed 120 or so. A nearsighted end who was skinny and slow but could catch the ball, assuming he could see it. Since I couldn’t wear my glasses there was little likelihood of that. It was August, 125 degrees. The first day we were doing a conditioning drill that was the child’s game of leapfrog. As I squatted, a huge lineman put his hand on my back and tried to vault me but couldn’t and he pushed me down and his foot landed on my hand. I could see the indentations from his cleats on the back of my hand and it throbbed but I didn’t tell a coach because they had already said they didn’t want to hear anything from us. I lasted a few more days, then gave it up. I always regretted not sticking it out even though I probably would never have played in a game, assuming I made the team. Even today I am envious of our class seniors, who were members of a fantastic team that went all the way to the state championship game at South High in Denver and were robbed of the victory by a referee. I was at the game. Several of us drove there, cursed for the first 10 minutes after the game, then didn’t say another word all the way home. Lots of us have memories of that game.

Some bad stuff happened to me at Central, some of it in the notorious gym class that has previously been mentioned on the blog. To this day I am disgusted that a teacher would allow and even promote some of the things that happened in that class. The choice was gym or ROTC, and as I understand it the ROTC guys had their moments too. But anyone who was in that gym class remembers it to this day. Ask them. Even then, some of the inmates were allowed to run the asylum, so I can’t even imagine what high school is like now, and I am concerned for my oldest grandson who is a freshman at South. He is smaller than I was. He has started football practice. And has stuck it out.

I recall a meeting I had with my faculty advisor, who shall go unnamed. For some reason I opened up to this guy and told him about some physical problems, migraines and some other stuff. His response, “You might as well flush yourself down.” That’s what he said to a sixteen year-old. Those advisors probably had no training at all in counseling. But they should have had common sense.

All things considered though, my days at Central were happy ones. It’s hard to realize that we were only kids, a few years out of elementary school, and we didn’t really know anything. But I have so many memories of little things that happened that were fun, and people I knew. Going to the games and cheering the silly cheers, and going to the movies at the Chief, Main, or Lake, Pueblo or Mesa drive-ins. Dragging Main and going to the A & W or BK, both on Elizabeth. Having lunch in the cafeteria with my geeky friends who all became successful. Acting in the junior class play and getting to know the other kids in the play during our many rehearsals, and having crushes on both Diane and Regina. Playing intramural basketball on the infamous team known as the Intellectuals. Playing poker in Ray Keen’s basement. Many of those students we knew then are gone now, and all of us realize that our best years are past. Since the invention of e-mail I have reconnected with several classmates and I think I know them better now than I did then. That is certainly true of Jeff Arnold, whom I barely knew before. I had friends at Central who are still my friends to this day, and next month we will fly to California for a reunion with two of them, Mike McNair and Gerry Perko, and with another member of our class who became my good friend the next year at Pueblo College, Robert Pardun.

I was always proud to have gone to Central. Maybe it wasn’t the best high school in the best city in the best state in the best country in the world. But it sure as hell was the best high school in Pueblo, Colorado.

I was away from Pueblo for 29 years before returning here to live in 1995. When you meet someone new here the same old question is still asked. “Where did you go to school?” It’s not your college they are asking about, that doesn’t mean a thing. “Central,” I say. “Class of ‘59.”

Jerry Miller